Drawings are used to express ideas visually on the web, in print or in other media. Drawings can be created and edited in software using various drawing applications. A typical drawing includes a plurality of paths, each of which has a region attribute, such as color. Paths in a drawing are typically assigned a single color along the entire length of each path. When a path is edited, the entire path retains the same color as before the edit. Coloring subpaths of the path is typically not possible in a straightforward way. To color subpaths of the path, the path needs to be separated into independent paths and colored individually. However, the subpaths are no longer part of the same path. The original path is lost and can no longer be manipulated as a single path. It would be useful to have a way to assign attributes to subpaths in a drawing and maintain consistency of subpath attributes across edits.